Sep 8 On right-wing "heroes"

The Right's favorite Democrat, Kim Davis, was released from her contempt of court sentence on the understanding that she won't interfere with her clerks doing their jobs.

This may be a short-lived reprieve, as her lawyer has said that he doesn't see how Ms. Davis will be able to, in good conscience, allow her clerks to do their jobs and marry those heathen, damned to hell icky gay people. So, she may be back in the "Real Orange is the New Black" soon.

But, that's neither here nor there. I have a more pressing question to investigate

Why are right wing heroes so bent in the head?

Let's take, for popularity's sake, Donald "The Hair" Trump. I know, the inestimable Paul Krugman wrote a glowing piece on Trump's economic beliefs last week. But the only reason Donald is for, perhaps, maybe raising taxes on the rich is so that he can fund the police state which will be required to deport 11 million people. That's akin to saying "Sure, that Holocaust thing was regrettable, but at least Adolf was a vegan!" This most recent and prominent Republican hero is one because he's telling the base that he's going to get medieval on whiny liberal asses.

Then you have the ur-Donald, la Sarah Palin of Wasilla. One couldn't think that anyone could outdo her vapidness. She set the bar so high for word salad and appeals to the reptile parts of Republican brains. Remember, her heroism was for saying that then-Senator Obama "palled around with terrorists", stoking the fever of hatred and vitriol from which we've yet to recover. Her status is from telling the base that she was going to get medieval on whiny liberal asses.

Then for the trifecta, let's pick that Mozart of Michigan, Ted Nugent. Where does one begin? His homophobia? His racism? His misogyny? His getting out of Vietnam by shitting his pants? (But if he'd gone to Nam, he totally would've capped some fucking hippies.) Forget about the fact this his music is to music what Ayn Rand is to literature. Forget about the fact that if one of the "mongrels" he so routinely derides were to come at him with a gun, an odious excrescence would emanate from his sphincter. He is the perfect right wing hero: all talk, no walk. And of course, his status is from telling his troglodyte minions that he was going to get medieval on whiny liberal asses.

Detect a pattern?

Every right wing hero promises to dole out copious amounts of righteous violence, whether physical or verbal. Violence is at the core of right wing ideology. Without violence, it has nothing. It is an ideology of recrimination, of angst, of loss, and the only remedy is a violent one. All right wing heroes promise some cleansing sort of violence, some apocalyptic deluge of liberating hate. No one promises to make the world better; they just promise to make "them" suffer. Conservatism as it exists now serves nothing but hatred. Anyone not like you is to be of the suspect crowd, and can be dealt with accordingly.

Can you imagine a modern Democrat say, as Chris Christie did, that the undocumented should be marked with numbers a la Treblinka for easier identification? But that's another hero, and it's not even the most shocking thing to come out of the other side of the aisle.

I could list a database of Democratic failings. (Not having balls or strategic vision, aside from President Obama, would be top of my list.) But one thing for which you cannot fault Democrats, in general, is a lack of humanity. Bernie Sanders' followers are gathering such flack, as is Bernie himself, because they seem so tone deaf to core Democratic values of inclusiveness. When he says "We're going to take back the White House", from whom, pray tell, is he going to take it back? Last I checked, a Democrat sat in the Oval Office. But that's the thing about Democrats: we call out garbage like that. Meanwhile the right is freebasing hate, and the hits have to be more potent than previous ones to keep up the high.

Right wing heroes reflect them: hateful, intolerant, bigoted, petulant. They're welcome to them. And no, you can't have "your country back"; we're using it at the moment, trying to make it better.